Arrival of AlenÇon in the Netherlands—His investure as Duke of Brabant—Leicester’s suspicion and intrigues—AlenÇon’s ceaseless demands for money—Henry III. refuses aid to his brother—The Queen’s attempts to revive the marriage negotiations—Universal distrust of her—Attempted assassination of William of Orange—Danger of AlenÇon—-Elizabeth’s fear of a French and Spanish understanding—To prevent it she again declares she will marry AlenÇon—Her renewed efforts to pledge the King of France before the marriage—She threatens France that she will make friends with Spain unless her terms are granted.

On February 10, 1582, AlenÇon’s fleet of fifteen ships anchored before Flushing, where the Princes of Orange and Epinay, with the members of the States, were already assembled to welcome the new sovereign of Brabant. He entered the town in great pomp with William the Silent on one side of him and Leicester on the other, and followed by Hunsdon, Willoughby, Philip Sidney, Sir John Norris who was in command of the English auxiliaries, and many other Englishmen. The bells rang, the guns thundered their welcome, and the crowds acclaimed their new ruler; but as Orange in his speech to the States clearly indicated, it was not the feeble Prince, a Frenchman, and a Catholic, they were greeting so much as the strong Protestant Queen of England, under whose auspices and protection he came. Wherever Frenchmen alone appeared they were looked at askance: at Middleburg the townspeople stoutly refused to admit even their new Duke’s French bodyguard until Leicester himself besought them to do so on his guarantee. All the citadels were open to Englishmen, but not a Frenchman, except AlenÇon, was allowed to enter them. AlenÇon wrote to Marchaumont almost as soon as he arrived that Orange and Leicester were arranging everything over his head, and he saw clearly that after all he was to play second fiddle. After some delay and misgiving, and a dispute for precedence between Brussels and Antwerp, the already disillusioned Prince made his state entry into the latter city, and received the oath of allegiance as Duke of Brabant. Everything that pomp could do was done to invest the ceremony with solemnity. When Orange clasped around the new Duke his ermine-bordered mantle he whispered to him, “I will fasten it firmly, Monseigneur, so that no one shall deprive you of it.” Garbed in his ducal panoply he passed through the city on horseback to the palace of St. Michael, sums of money in coins stamped with his effigy were flung to the crowd, and in appearance at least his longing for sovereignty was satisfied. But in appearance alone, for the States and Orange were urged by Leicester never to let the power out of their hands—and they never did.

In the meanwhile Elizabeth in England was still playing her part of the comedy. When she had parted from her lover at Canterbury she prayed him to address her in his letters as his wife, and daily epistles full of lovesick nonsense continued to pass between them. She openly said that she would willingly give a million for her dear “frog” to be disporting himself in the clear waters of the Thames rather than in the sluggish ponds of the Netherlands, and again asserted her intention of marrying her suitor if his brother would fulfil his promises. All this made Leicester in Flanders and Hatton in London somewhat distrustful. The former thought that perhaps after all he might be duped, and that AlenÇon might detain him against his will. The Queen, moreover, in Hatton’s hearing had made some remark about men never knowing how fortunate they were until fortune had left them, which he applied to Leicester, and sent a special messenger to urge him to return at once. Leicester needed no second bidding. The very day after the investure of AlenÇon he suddenly left Antwerp at dinner-time and hastened to England. He arrived in London on the 26th of February in high glee, boasting of the good service he had done in leaving the Queen’s troublesome suitor stuck fast in the bogs, like a wrecked hulk, deserted by wind and tide. The oath of allegiance, he said, was only a farce, and AlenÇon a laughing-stock. Pasquins and insulting placards had been fixed to his chamber-door on the very first day of his stay in Antwerp; the Queen of England, and she alone, was now arbitratress of the peace of Europe. This was pleasant talk for Elizabeth, but was soon conveyed to Marchaumont, who made a formal complaint to the Queen of Leicester’s words. For this reason or from fear of Spain, she had a great wrangle with Leicester the next night. She had never meant to sanction the formal investure, she said, and had not been informed of it. Leicester, for his own ostentation, had implied by his presence at the ceremony her authority for it, and had drawn her into an act of open hostility to the King of Spain. He was a knave and a traitor, she said, and much else of the same sort. It was all a planned thing between him and that tyrannical Orange, so that the latter might have his own way in all things. She then turned on Walsingham, and called him a scamp for persuading AlenÇon to go to the Netherlands at all. Probably all this extraordinary talk, and the Queen and Cecil’s sudden attempt to gain the goodwill and friendship of Spain, were caused by the intelligence sent by her ambassador, Cobham, in France, that the King had stoutly refused to countenance his brother’s attempt, and had declared traitors all those who helped him. Henry’s hand then was not to be forced, and after all she might find herself alone face to face with all the Catholic powers united. The fear of this always brought her to her knees, and she insisted upon Cecil’s leaving a sick bed to come and advise her what to do. He urged her emphatically either to marry AlenÇon at once or make terms with the King of Spain, as things had now come to a crisis which could not be prolonged. She was peevish and quarrelsome with all about her, and perplexed to the last degree. Cecil urged her one way, Walsingham another, and Sussex a third. AlenÇon was clamouring through Marchaumount for money, more money, for not a penny could he get elsewhere. His new subjects were bitterly distrustful of him, and hated his Frenchmen almost as much as they did their Spanish oppressors; and the poor Queen had nearly come to the end of her clever serpentine devices. First she decided to write, pressing AlenÇon to come over at once and marry her—anything to relieve herself of the sole and open responsibility of the war—she solemnly swore to Castelnau that this time she was in earnest, and would really marry the Prince if he came. But Castelnau was incredulous and irresponsive, Walsingham and Leicester were inimical, and it is very doubtful whether the letter to AlenÇon was really sent. Certain it is that the Queen wrote a letter with her own hand, and handed it the same day (March 5th) to Marchaumont to send to AlenÇon, urging him not to trust the Flemish mob overmuch, or to venture further in the business than the support he was sure of would warrant. As his brother would not help him he must not expect her to quarrel with the King of Spain alone. She thus coolly left him in the lurch. The very day after this letter left, one of Pinart’s secretaries brought important letters from the King of France, his mother, and from Cobham to the Queen, which once more entirely changed the aspect of affairs. The King assured her that under no circumstances would he help his brother or break with Spain, whilst Cobham detailed a long conversation he had had with the King, in which the latter had expressed the greatest anger and indignation at the way in which a vain and fickle woman had befooled a prince of the blood royal of France for her own ends. Thank God! he said, he was not such a fool as his brother, and if the latter had only listened to him he would have safely and surely raised him to a better place than the Queen of England could do. In vain Cobham had sought to mollify the King. The Queen might try her cleverness upon others, said Henry, but if she was not straightforward with him she should suffer for it. He had already conceded too much to her, and would go no further. In future all responsibility must rest on the Queen of England. Elizabeth did not wait even to consult the Council, but at once sent a special courier to Cobham, ordering him to assure the King that there was nothing she desired more than to marry if he would fulfil the conditions. Then she summoned Sussex, and told him to arrange with Marchaumont to renew the arrangements for the marriage. But Sussex was sick of the whole business; he felt he was a mere catspaw, and yet he was being blamed by all parties; so he declined to interfere, on the ground that the Queen had so often expressed her natural repugnance to marriage that he was sure she would never bring herself to it, and she had better try to excuse the slights she had offered to the French royal house than commence a new series of them. Besides, he said, however fit AlenÇon might be personally, his present position in the Netherlands made it most dangerous for her to marry him now, as it might bring her country face to face with Spain. He should not be doing his duty, said Sussex, did he not advise her, if she decided to marry the Duke, only to do so in case he left the Netherlands and surrendered the title of Duke of Brabant. She assured Sussex in reply that if she did marry she would make the Duke abandon the Netherlands enterprise. She then went to visit Cecil, who was ill with gout, and told him she had overcome her last scruple, and had decided to marry; but he was just as cool as Sussex, and would have nothing to do with it, and warned her to take care what she was about, or ill would come of it. Marchaumont was next taken in hand, and told by the Queen that at last she had decided to marry in real earnest. She urged him to persuade his master on this assurance, to retire from the Netherlands until she had arranged with his brother to break with Spain jointly with her. Marchaumont had long been begging for money, and seized the opportunity of suggesting that he should himself go to Flanders and bring AlenÇon round to her views, taking with him the gold she had promised him from Drake’s plunder. The Council would not consent to Marchaumont’s going, but they sent the £15,000 with the letter the next night. This was early in March, 1582, and on the 18th of the same month AlenÇon was giving an entertainment to celebrate his birthday at the palace of St. Michael, in Antwerp, when a young Biscayner discharged a pistol in the face of the Prince of Orange and wounded him in a way that kept him hovering between life and death for weeks to come. At the first news of the treacherous shot at the national hero, the hatred of the stout Dutchmen for the French flared out. It ran like wildfire from town to town that this was another plot of the false brood of Valois and Medici, and for a day AlenÇon’s own life was in danger. But for the courage and presence of mind of Orange himself in his own apparently mortal strait every Frenchman in Flanders would probably have been massacred, and AlenÇon amongst them. The moment the Queen of England heard the news all the ports were closed, and one of her Gentlemen of the Chamber was instructed to hasten to Antwerp and tell AlenÇon to leave the States instantly. When Walsingham learnt this he solemnly warned his mistress to take care what she did. If AlenÇon came again she must marry him or bring all Catholic Christendom against her. She therefore, but very unwillingly, took another course—namely, to send for Castelnau, the French ambassador, and assure him on her word of honour as a Queen that she would marry AlenÇon. This and other things she desired that he would convey to the King officially; but really the trick was getting too stale. Castelnau replied that she had at various times made him write so many things which she had no intention of fulfilling that he must decline to do so any more. After much persuasion, however, he consented to write, although he made no secret of his derision of the whole affair.

If Mendoza is to be believed, the Queen was playing a doubly false game on the present occasion. She was trying to prevent the King of France from joining a coalition against her by again professing willingness to become his sister-in-law, she was beguiling AlenÇon with renewed ideas of marriage and help, to prevent him in his despair from making terms with Parma, she was sending messages urging him to retire from the Netherlands for his safety’s sake in order to relieve herself of the responsibility of helping him, whilst, by the very same messenger, she was instructing Orange and the Protestants on no account to let him go, so that she might not be plagued again by his appearance in England as a pressing suitor. All through March and April news continued to arrive of the Prince of Orange’s desperate condition. For days he was only kept alive by the repression of the severed artery by the fingers of relays of attendants night and day. Several times apparently well-founded intelligence came of his death, and Elizabeth and her councillors had to consider the new aspect of affairs which such an event would produce. Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham were in favour of the Queen herself taking the protectorate of the Netherlands, as she could then, if necessary, make better terms with Spain; whilst if AlenÇon and the French once got their grip on the country it would be ruinous to England. Sussex and Cecil, on the other hand, were for making an arrangement with Spain at once. When they submitted their diverse opinions to the Queen she angrily complained that the death of a single person made all her councillors tremble and deprived her subjects of their courage. But she took her own tortuous course whatever her councillors’ opinions might be. First she publicly declared on every occasion her fixed intention of marrying AlenÇon; then she sent for Sussex and begged him to write to the Duke that when he had made terms with Spain or had otherwise arranged to relieve her of the need for contributing to the war, she would marry him at once; and to this she would pledge her word as a Queen and her oath as a Christian. But Sussex refused this time to be the instrument for still further injuring her reputation, as he said. He had innocently done so before, but he knew that marriage was repugnant to her, and he would have no more to do with it.156 Finding that Sussex was obdurate, the Queen, not to be baulked, sent her message by a gentleman of AlenÇon’s named Pruneaux, who was then in London.

The reason for this was that in case the amicable settlement she feared was arrived at by AlenÇon and his brother after Orange’s death, she should not be left out of the arrangement, which she certainly would not be if AlenÇon still hoped to be accepted as her husband. She was indeed in greater fear of the French now than ever; Henry III. had become more and more complaisant with his brother as the danger of Orange increased, and notwithstanding all her diplomacy she could not extract even the smallest conditional promise to break with Spain, even, as she put it, as a matter of form. The coast of Flanders and Holland in the hands of the French would mean ruin to England, and, as usual, she railed at Walsingham for his innocent share in promoting AlenÇon’s going thither. “You knave!” she greeted him with one day, “you ought to have your head off your shoulders for persuading the Duke to go to Antwerp. He is trying now to get hold of the ports, but they will see whether I will put up with that coolly;” whereupon the secretary answered not a word. She wrote again to AlenÇon, telling him she would marry him if he came, and would not stand in the way of his Netherlands plans if she were not expected to contribute to the cost; but if he continued the war without marrying her she would be his mortal foe and would expend her last man and her last shot in preventing him from obtaining uncontrolled possession of the Netherlands. The £15,000 she had sent him, she said, was a mark of affection rather than a subsidy for the war, and indeed at this time—the end of April, 1582—it is clear that her most pressing fear was lest the death of Orange should allow the French to obtain the control of the country over her head, to make their own terms with Philip, and leave her and the Protestants in the lurch. She left no effort untried to persuade the French that she really would marry AlenÇon, but Castelnau, as well as his master and the Queen-mother, were not very credulous by this time, and were inclined rather to make a joke of her newly-revived ardour. On one occasion when she was setting forth in detail to Castelnau the various reasons which she said made her marriage with AlenÇon now necessary, he told her that she had forgotten the most important reason of all, namely, that people were saying that she had already given him the privileges of a husband. This was expressed in words that would in our day be considered unpardonably coarse and insulting if applied to the humblest woman, but the Queen only answered that she would soon stop the rumour. The ambassador told her that she might perhaps do so in her own realm, but it would be impossible in other countries where it was public talk. Excited and angry at this the Queen exclaimed that her conscience was clear and innocent, and she therefore feared nothing; she would stifle such calumnies everywhere by her marriage.157

Very anxiously she awaited the replies from the King and AlenÇon to her new approaches. After some delay the former very coolly sent word that he could go no further than the terms which had been conveyed by Pinart; but day after day passed without the arrival of an answer from AlenÇon, and the Queen, in the interim, hardly sought to hide her trepidation from her councillors, especially from Sussex. In the meanwhile Leicester and his friends were busy again stirring up Protestant fears against the match, and Cecil and Sussex were urging an arrangement with Spain. At last, on the 2nd of May, Bacqueville arrived with a letter from AlenÇon to the Queen full of extravagant professions of love and rejoicing. He had, he said, ceased to mention the marriage for the last two months as he had despaired of it, she having told him herself that the mountains would move ere she would willingly wed. Now, however, that she had changed her mind, he would not trust to letters, but would himself take flight like a swallow and nest in England. This was his final resolution, and he entreated her to send him word immediately when he might come and consummate his joy. This letter plunged the Queen once more in the midst of the intrigue, and she confidently resumed her masterly handling of the tangled skein. She openly expressed her pleasure at her approaching union, she scolded poor Walsingham as if he were a pickpocket, because, she said, he had caused dissension between her and her lover, and then she sent for Castelnau and Marchaumont. She conveyed to them AlenÇon’s determination to come, and swore solemnly that since she had given him the ring she had never wavered for a moment in her intention of becoming AlenÇon’s wife, if the King of France would fulfil the conditions. Having thus demonstrated her sincerity with regard to the marriage itself, her next move was to dissociate herself from AlenÇon’s projects in the Netherlands. She turned upon Marchaumont like a fury, told him he was a sordid, venal fellow who had never ceased to importune her for money since his master left, as if they both of them only cared for her to administer to his ambition, and his only object was to torment the old woman until they had drained her purse.158 She then formally requested the ambassador to inform the King—first, that AlenÇon was coming to marry her as soon as word was sent to him; second, that she herself was of the same mind; and third, that the final word now rested with the King. She had demanded that he should defray half of the expenses of the war in the Netherlands, not because she desired war with Spain—quite the contrary. She desired universal peace and good-will, but as AlenÇon, for his own ends, had entered into the affair she did not want her subjects to say that she had broken their long peace and prosperity and wasted their treasure for the sake of marriage; and she therefore wished the King to promise to defray half the cost of the war before the marriage. It was of the utmost importance, she repeated, that the King should hand the money over before the ceremony, and she did not see how she could marry unless he did so. She urged the ambassador to impress upon the King how very straightforwardly she had acted in the matter, and to request him to send a person of sufficiently high rank fully empowered to settle; and she would then summon AlenÇon and marry him without further ado. Castelnau demurred at this. She had deceived him, he said, so often, that his master had reproved him for his credulity. How could he believe her word, he asked. “These are not words alone,” replied the Queen, “these are the solemn oaths of a Queen and a Christian woman,” and she called God’s vengeance down upon herself if she broke them. Then she began to hector. If the King did not accede to so reasonable a demand, she said, she would know that he had been tricking her all along, and she would be his and his brother’s mortal foe for life. Her last man and her last penny should be sacrificed, she swore, before she would permit the French to gain a footing in the Netherlands. She had plenty of powerful friends, the King of Spain was seeking her, and if the King of France did not make haste and consent to her terms, she should consider his action as a negative, and immediately throw him over and join the King of Spain.159